Christie Blatchford: 383,501 Torontonians voted for Rob Ford — not one voted for the men behind his ouster

Rob Ford got 383,501 votes—the men behind his removal didn't get any

So, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been given the boot from office because an opportunistic citizen hired a smart and politically savvy lawyer who found a club of an arcane statute with which to tie the hands of a judge who was willing to play ball.

No wonder so much cynicism exists about lawyers, judges and politics. In Toronto, the democratic will of the population has just been smashed to smithereens by the gavel of a single unelected judge. Because on one day in February, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford spoke and voted on a resolution that affected him (at issue was whether he should be made to personally reimburse donors to his football foundation after he inappropriately used city letterhead), he has now been removed from office.

There was “absolutely no issue of corruption or pecuniary gain” on Mr. Ford’s part, Ontario Superior Court Judge Charles Hackland wrote in a decision released Monday.

In other words, this isn’t analogous to the cases involving other Canadian mayors where the allegations are about corruption or the countenancing of corruption — Joe Fontana, of London, Ont., who is facing fraud charges, and refuses to step down; Laval’s Gilles Vaillancourt, who quit earlier this month after a witness at Quebec’s corruption inquiry testified the mayor took kickbacks on all construction contracts; Montreal’s Gerald Tremblay, who resigned Nov. 6 amid accusations he had turned a blind eye to the corruption that was purportedly all around him.

To quote Judge Hackland again: Mayor Ford’s case, by comparison, “involved a modest amount of money which he endeavoured to raise for a legitimate charity [his football foundation], which is administered at arm’s length through the Community Foundation of Toronto.”

Found guilty by an Ontario judge of conflict of interest, relating to the mayor’s decision to vote on an issue in which he had a direct financial stake (whether he had to refund roughly $3,000 in charitable donations he had improperly solicited on city letterhead), Ford may not be permitted to run again for office until 2014. Legal opinion is split on whether he could run in a byelection, if one were held to fill his office.

Furthermore, as the judge also noted, when Mr. Ford insisted on speaking to the original motion at city council — the integrity commissioner Janet Leiper had suggested council ask him to repay the $3,150 given to the foundation by donors he’d approached using city letterhead — he was trying to clear the air “in circumstances where many informed commentators would contend that the principles of procedural fairness…should have allowed him to speak (although not to vote).”

The Mayor did, notoriously, vote for a motion that rescinded the order to repay.

As the judge said, his speaking and voting “was far from the most serious breach,” but removal is mandatory unless the breach was inadvertent or by reason of an error in judgment.

Mr. Ford’s own testimony at trial made it clear it wasn’t inadvertent (he said he came to that meeting with the intention of speaking, on principle if you like) or an error in judgment (or that if it was, it was his fault for either not knowing or ignoring the rules). Besides, the judge said, Mr. Ford showed “a stubborn sense of entitlement [concerning his football foundation] and a dismissive and confrontational attitude” to the integrity boss and council’s code of conduct.

The mandatory removal required — under Section 10.1 of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act — makes the statute an ass, as the judge himself acknowledged.

It “is a very blunt instrument and has attracted justified criticism and calls for legislative reform,” the judge said.

He quoted no less than David Mullan, a professor in administrative law and Toronto’s first integrity commissioner, who six years ago told city council that “it is simply Byzantine to have a regime under which the only way of dealing legally with conflict of interest in a municipal setting is by way of an elector making an application to a judge and where the principal and mandatory penalty…is the sledgehammer of an order that the member’s office is vacated.”

Had Judge Hackland been looking for an out — to address what he pretty plainly agrees is a bad law — his best bet was Section 4 (k) of the statute, which says that removal doesn’t apply if the pecuniary interest “is so remote or insignificant in its nature that it cannot reasonably be regarded as likely to influence the member.”

But the judge found that what the Mayor said at that meeting where he shouldn’t even have been speaking revealed “his pecuniary interest…was of significance to him” and the 4 (k) exemption didn’t apply.

What Mr. Ford said was this: “And if it wasn’t for this foundation, these kids would not have had a chance. And then to ask that I pay it out of my own pocket personally, there is just, there is no sense to this. The money is gone; the money has been spent on football equipment.”

(I’d argue that it’s just as reasonable to interpret that as the sputtering and clumsy protest of a man who was bewildered how doing something good had turned so bad.)

Thus did the judge join Paul Magder (the citizen who complained) and Clay Ruby (Mr. Magder’s lawyer) in using an elephant gun of a statute on a flea of a misdemeanor.

In the post-Charter of Rights and Freedoms world that is the modern Canada, citizens have grown accustomed to taking their laws as much from the courts — the Supreme Court and Superior Courts all across the country — as they do from the Parliament. Indeed, it is often celebrated when the courts overturn laws made by the federal government, especially the Stephen Harper government.

On Oct. 25, 2010, 383,501 Torontonians voted for Rob Ford, 93,669 more than voted for the runner up, George Smitherman, and just 1,813 fewer than all of those who voted for third-place finisher Joe Pantalone.